“I must go,” she said. “I shall just have time for my dinner and for an hour’s rest before I dress for the ball.” Mrs. De Peyster and Helena urged her to remain and dine, but Olivia declined, and the servant announced her carriage. Pembroke put her white burnous around her in the hall, and handed her to her carriage. They were all to meet at the Russian Legation at half-past ten. At that hour the broad street in front of the Legation was packed with carriages. An awning for the waiting footmen extended on each side of the broad porte cochére. Half a dozen policemen kept the carriages in line and the coachmen in order--for this was the great ball of the season, a royal grand duke was to be present, and the fame of Madame Volkonsky’s beauty had gone far and wide. The vast house blazed with lights, and amid the rolling of wheels, and the hubbub of many voices could be heard the strains of an orchestra floating out. Almost at the same moment the carriages containing Olivia and her father, Pembroke and the De Peysters drove up, and the party vanished upstairs. “How beautiful you are!” cried Helena delightedly, up in the dressing room, as Olivia dropped her wraps and appeared in her dainty white toilette, Olivia blushed with gratified vanity. Her dress was the perfection of simplicity, soft and diaphanous, and around her milk white arms and throat were her mother’s pearls. As the three ladies came out into the brilliant corridor to meet their escorts, Pembroke received a kind of thrill at Olivia’s beauty--a beauty which had never struck him very forcibly before. She was undoubtedly pretty and graceful, and he had often admired her slight and willowy figure--but she had grown beautiful in her solitary country life--beautiful with patience, courage and womanliness. The Colonel, in a superb swallow-tail of the style of ten years past, his coat-tails lined with white satin, his snowy ruffle falling over the bosom of his waistcoat, his fine curling white hair combed carefully down upon his velvet collar in the old fashion, offered his arm like a prince to Mrs. De Peyster, herself a stately and imposing matron, and proud to be escorted by such a chevalier. Pembroke walked beside Olivia and Helena down the broad staircase. Is there any form of social life more imposing than a really splendid ball? The tall and nodding ferns and palms, the penetrating odor of flowers, the clash of music, the brilliant crowd moving to and fro through the great drawing-rooms and halls, brought a deeper flush to Olivia’s cheek. She felt like a débutante. They made their way slowly toward the upper end of the last of a noble suite of rooms. Pembroke was just saying in low tone to the two girls, “I have looked out for your interests with the Grand Duke. My friend Ryleief has promised to present both of you--an honor I waived for myself, as being quite beneath the Grand Duke’s notice, and--”